The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Outcast, by F. Colburn Adams

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Title: An Outcast
or, Virtue and Faith

Author: F. Colburn Adams

Release Date: March 5, 2007 [EBook #20745]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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AN OUTCAST;

OR,

VIRTUE AND FAITH.

BY

F. COLBURN ADAMS.

"Be merciful to the erring."

NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY M. DOOLADY,
49 WALKER STREET.
1861.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861,

BY M. DOOLADY,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.

PREFACE.

When reason and conscience are a man's true guides to what he
undertakes, and he acts strictly in obedience to them, he has little to
fear from what the unthinking may say. You cannot, I hold, mistake a man
intent only on doing good. You may differ with him on the means he calls
to his aid; but having formed a distinct plan, and carried it out in
obedience to truth and right, it will be difficult to impugn the
sincerity of his motives. For myself, I care not what weapon a man
choose, so long as he wield it effectively, and in the cause of humanity
and justice. We are a sensitive nation, prone to pass great moral evils
over in silence rather than expose them boldly, or trace them to their
true sources. I am not indifferent to the duty every writer owes to
public opinion, nor the penalties he incurs in running counter to it.
But fear of public opinion, it seems to me, has been productive of much
evil, inasmuch as it prefers to let crime exist rather than engage in
reforms. Taking this view of the matter, I hold fear of public opinion
to be an evil much to be deplored. It aids in keeping out of sight that
which should be exposed to public view, and is satisfied to pass
unheeded the greatest of moral evils. Most writers touch these great
moral evils with a timidity that amounts to fear, and in describing
cr